Cabin Porn: Inspiration for Your Quiet Place Somewhere


Zach Klein - 2015
    As the collection grew, the site attracted a following, which is now a huge and obsessive audience.The site features photos of the most remarkable handmade homes in the backcountry of America and all over the world. It has had over 10 million unique visitors, with 350,000 followers on Tumblr. Now Zach Klein, the creator of the site (and a co-founder of Vimeo) goes further into the most alluring images from the site and new getaways, including more interior photography and how-to advice for setting up a quiet place somewhere. With their idyllic settings, unique architecture and cozy interiors, the Cabin Porn photographs, are an invitation to slow down, take a deep breath, and feel the beauty and serenity that nature and simple construction can create.

The New Small House


Katie Hutchison - 2015
    The book presents fundamental small-house design strategies, complete with whole-house case studies for homeowners eager to simplify. Creating a great small house is illustrated in the opening chapter with 10 approaches, including: borrowed view and daylight multipurpose spaces privacy pockets using quality materials Twenty-five stunning small houses are profiled in the second part of the book, organized by the nature of their locations.

Tiny House Living: Ideas for Building & Living Well in Less than 400 Square Feet


Ryan Mitchell - 2014
    Free yourself from clutter, mortgages and home maintenance while making more room in everyday life for the important things. Whether you downsize to a 400-square-foot home or simply scale back the amount of stuff you have in your current home, this book shows you how to well with less.This book explores the philosophies behind the tiny house movement, helps you determine whether it's a good fit for you, and guides you through the transition to a smaller space. For inspiration, you'll meet tiny house pioneers and hear how they built their dwellings (and their lives) in unconventional, creative and purposeful ways.Everything you need to design a tiny home of your own:• Worksheets and exercises to help you determine your true needs, define personal goals, and develop a tiny house layout that's just right for you• Practical strategies for cutting through clutter and paring down your possessions.• Guidance through the world of building codes and zoning laws.• Design tricks for making the most of every square foot, including multi-function features and ways to maximize vertical space.• Tours of 11 tiny homes and the unique story behind each.Imagine you house help you Live Your Dreams!

Atomic Ranch Midcentury Interiors


Michelle Gringeri-Brown - 2012
    It features the exceptional interiors of eight houses, discusses successes and challenges, and shows how to live stylishly. Tips are shared on color, flooring, window coverings, furniture arrangements, and how off-the-shelf components can be turned into custom features. The homeowners' stories explain why these rooms work, and provide you with resources and ideas for everything from garage doors to the art on the wall.

Micro Living: 40 Innovative Tiny Houses Equipped for Full-Time Living, in 400 Square Feet or Less


Derek "Deek" Diedricksen - 2018
    Best-selling author and tiny house enthusiast Derek “Deek” Diedricksen profiles 40 tiny — but practical — houses that are equipped for full-time living, all in 400 square feet or less. Detailed photography and a floor plan for each structure highlight inventive space-saving design features along with the nuts-and-bolts details of heating, cooling, electric, and plumbing systems. The real-life stories of residents impart the pleasures, as well as the challenges, of day-to-day living. With tips on what to consider before you build, along with framing plans for a prototype small cabin, Micro Living is the perfect starter handbook for both dreamers and doers.

Country Living Tiny Homes: Living Big in Small Spaces


Country Living - 2018
    Country Living showcases a coast-to-coast collection of sustainable dwellings, all ranging from 100 to 1,500 square feet. Take an inside tour of these impressive little abodes, like a converted 1840s schoolhouse in New York, a 22- x 24-foot kit barn in California wine country, a 1914 New Hampshire coastal row home, and a renovated 1950s Alabama lake house. Along with inspiring photographs, hundreds of decorating tips, smart finds, and storage solutions will help you implement minimalistic living in your own home. These charming cottages, delightful she-sheds, functional farmhouses, and transformative trailersfeature a clever use of space and prove that going small can be simple and fulfilling.

Homebody: A Guide to Creating Spaces You Never Want to Leave


Joanna Gaines - 2018
    This comprehensive guide will help you assess your priorities and your instincts, as well as your likes and dislikes, with practical steps for navigating and embracing your authentic design style.Room by room, Homebody gives you an in-depth look at how these styles are iterated as well as how to blend the genres you’re drawn to in order to create spaces that look and feel distinctly yours.In each chapter are practical takeaways to help problem solve potential pain points in your home. A fold out design guidebook at the back of the book offers a place for you to take notes and sketch out your own design plans as you make your way through the rooms.The insight shared in Homebody will instill in you the confidence to thoughtfully create spaces that you never want to leave.

Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism


Fumio Sasaki - 2015
    The effects were remarkable: Sasaki gained true freedom, new focus, and a real sense of gratitude for everything around him. In Goodbye, Things Sasaki modestly shares his personal minimalist experience, offering specific tips on the minimizing process and revealing how the new minimalist movement can not only transform your space but truly enrich your life. The benefits of a minimalist life can be realized by anyone, and Sasaki’s humble vision of true happiness will open your eyes to minimalism’s potential.

The Small House Book


Jay Shafer - 2009
    averaged $244,000. That is far more than the average American can afford. Jay Shafer shatters the myth that affordable housing needs to be cheap. In his book, Jay reveals the ugly truth about residential planning and the needless overbuilding that is, in part, to blame for today's mortgage crisis. Did you know that you can't build a house as tiny as the one Jay lives in? That is, unless you know the loopholes! He's done the research, and shares it with you. You'll learn why it is necessary to build on wheels, and see the process of attaching a house to a trailer with step-by-step instructions and pictures. Jay Shafer, the author, personally built a dozen tiny houses and lived in 3 different ones. He is recognized as a leader in the Small House Movement.

The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir


Dee Williams - 2014
    Diagnosed with a heart condition at age forty-one, she was all too suddenly reminded that life is short, time is precious, and she wanted to be spending hers with the people and things she truly loved. That included the beautiful sprawling house in the Pacific Northwest she had painstakingly restored—but, increasingly, it did not include the mortgage payments, constant repairs, and general time-suck of home ownership. A new sense of clarity began to take hold: Just what was all this stuff for? Multiple extra rooms, a kitchen stocked with rarely used appliances, were things that couldn’t compare with the financial freedom and the ultimate luxury—time—that would come with downsizing.             Deciding to build an eighty-four-square-foot house—on her own, from the ground up—was just the beginning of building a new life. Williams can now list everything she owns on one sheet of paper, her monthly housekeeping bills amount to about eight dollars, and it takes her approximately ten minutes to clean the entire house. It’s left her with more time to spend with family and friends, and given her freedom to head out for adventure at a moment’s notice, or watch the clouds and sunset while drinking a beer on her (yes, tiny) front porch.             The lessons Williams learned from her “aha” moment post-trauma apply to all of us, every day, regardless of whether or not we decide to discard all our worldly belongings. Part how-to, part personal memoir, The Big Tiny is an utterly seductive meditation on the benefits of slowing down, scaling back, and appreciating the truly important things in life.

A Frame for Life: The Designs of StudioIlse


Ilse Crawford - 2014
    Studioilse, the award-winning design studio founded by Ilse Crawford, bridges the worlds of interior design, architecture, and product design with the philosophy of putting the human being at the center. Fascinated by what drives us and makes us feel alive, Crawford says: "When I look at making spaces, I don’t just look at the visual. I’m much more interested in the sensory thing, in thinking about it from the human context, the primal perspective, the thing that touches you." Featuring Studioilse’s work to date, from private residences to hotels, restaurants, and retail projects, this book illustrates the effectiveness of design grounded in human needs and desires. Layering materials and textures, combined with her understanding of human behavior, Crawford’s designs are sensual and accessible. A forerunner of the holistic design movement a decade ago, her humanistic approach has now become the norm. This volume illustrates why Crawford’s design philosophy is so seminal—her work has influenced not only a generation of Dutch and European designers, but also Americans due to her acclaimed Soho House New York. With new photography and essays by Crawford and design critic Edwin Heatcote, this inspirational volume is sure to be one of the most important design books of the year.

Rethink: The Way You Live


Amanda Talbot - 2012
    Filled with evocative images of homes around the globe, the book illustrates how design game-changers are weaving age-old resourcefulness with new technology, creativity with sustainability to construct a more meaningful existence. We can think small (bringing more nature inside) or big (installing moving walls for multifunctional spaces), but the point is to rethink our design choices today for a more sustainable tomorrow. Beautiful and informative, Rethink reveals how to build a better world from the inside out.

The Little Book of Living Small


Laura Fenton - 2020
    It features twelve case study homes in which style-savvy, small-space dwellers (from singles to families of four) open their doors and share their design secrets. Stylistically these homes range from urban to rural, minimalist to bohemian, with the unifying thread that they are all real homes of 1,200 square feet or less and offer clever solutions for you to use in your own home.Highly engaging with lists, tips, and actionable advice, The Little Book of Living Small shows readers how to make the most of limited square footage—with grace and style—and serves as the cheerleader readers need to help themselves feel satisfied and proud of their choice to live with less.Laura Fenton is the author of The Little Book of Living Small and the former lifestyle director at Parents magazine, where she oversaw all the home content for the publication. A writer with more than fifteen years of experience, her work has appeared in major publications including Better Homes & Gardens, Country Living, Good Housekeeping, and on leading home websites including Remodelista, HGTV.com, ElleDecor.com, Curbed, and Refinery29. Through her writing she has explored the topic of living small for more than a decade. She lives small with her husband, a photographer, and their son in Jackson Heights, Queens, in New York.

The Home Edit: A Guide to Organizing and Realizing Your House Goals


Clea Shearer - 2019
    From the Instagram-sensation home experts (with a serious fan club that includes Reese Witherspoon, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Mindy Kaling), here is an accessible, room-by-room guide to establishing new order in your home.Believe this: every single space in your house has the potential to function efficiently and look great. The mishmash of summer and winter clothes in the closet? Yep. Even the dreaded junk drawer? Consider it done. And the best news: it's not hard to do--in fact, it's a lot of fun.From the home organizers who made their orderly eye candy the method that everyone swears by comes Joanna and Clea's signature approach to decluttering. The Home Edit walks you through paring down your belongings in every room, arranging them in a stunning and easy-to-find way (hello, labels!), and maintaining the system so you don't need another do-over in six months. When you're done, you'll not only know exactly where to find things, but you'll also love the way it looks.A masterclass and look book in one, The Home Edit is filled with bright photographs and detailed tips, from placing plastic dishware in a drawer where little hands can reach to categorizing pantry items by color (there's nothing like a little ROYGBIV to soothe the soul). Above all, it's like having your best friends at your side to help you turn the chaos into calm.

Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter


Lloyd Kahn - 2012
    The real estate collapse, the economic downturn, burning out on 12-hour workdays – many people are rethinking their ideas about shelter – seeking an alternative to high rents, or a lifelong mortgage debt to a bank on an overpriced home. Homes on land, homes on wheels, homes on the road, homes on water, even homes in the trees. There are also studios, saunas, garden sheds, and greenhouses.There are 1,300 photos, showing a rich variety of small homemade shelters, and there are stories (and thoughts and inspirations) of the owner-builders who are on the forefront of this new trend in downsizing and self-sufficiency. You can buy a ready-made tiny home, build your own, get a kit or pre-fab, or live in a bus, houseboat, or other movable shelter. Some cities have special ordinances for building "in-law" or "granny flats" in the back yard. There are innovative solutions in cities, such as the "capsules" in Tokyo.If you're thinking of scaling back, you'll find plenty of inspiration shown by builders, designers, architects, dreamers, artists, road gypsies, and water dwellers who've achieved a measure of freedom and independence by taking shelter into their own hands.